Zoom aims to stay relevant with €12bn acquisition

Zoom has been looking for ways to keep growing as workers begin to return to the office and students go back to school.

Zoom Video Communications, whose online conferencing services took off during the Covid-19 pandemic, has agreed to acquire US tech firm Five9 for $14.7bn (€12.4bn), using its surging stock to expand into an adjacent market that could bolster revenue as lockdowns end.

The value of the all-stock offer is $200.18 a share based on the closing price for Zoom’s common stock last Friday, compared with Five9’s $177.60 price on Friday, the companies said. 

The target firm will become an operating unit of Zoom after the deal, which is subject to shareholder approval and slated to close in the first half of 2022.

Zoom has been looking for ways to keep growing as workers begin to return to the office and students go back to school.

Expanding offerings

The deal for Five9 will help it to expand offerings to its more lucrative business and enterprise clients. 

Five9, based in San Ramon, California, makes cloud-based software that uses artificial intelligence to help companies to answer questions from customers and interact with them regardless of language, location, or device.

The traditional call centre, where a customer service representative responded by phone, has shifted to the internet and is now often powered or augmented by chat bots. 

The market for these cloud-based customer call centres is estimated at $24bn, according to the companies. 

Together, Zoom and Five9 aim to better compete with the likes of Cisco Systems, RingCentral, and Amazon.

Zoom CEO Eric Yuan called Five9 a “natural fit” and said Five9 is complementary to Zoom Phone, the company’s business that replaces traditional company telephone services with modern, cloud-based offerings.

• Bloomberg